Vijay Sai Pratap, Co-founder & CEO, Gram Vaani 

Even after 9, 10 years [of] running, every pitch, every conversation, every discussion I have with a new partner or a new client or a new investor or a new funder, I seem to be finding a new way of explaining what we do. It's always a new thing. Every time I feel, wow, why didn't I think about it earlier?

Soumya Dabriwal, Co-founder, Baala

I mean, you're constantly pitching your business every single day. I think the success is lesser than the failure. You celebrate your successes wholeheartedly with your entire team and your entire being, and you take your failures as feedback, and sometimes not even. Sometimes you just think that it's a misalignment.

Where you see opportunity and potential, you need to push. You can't give up there. If you see that it's going to work out—I mean, there's this one funder that I've been pursuing for the last 18 months, and I know there's potential. That's what you need to build a knack for. Where can you continue to push and identify that this is going to be a great place for me to be connected to and get money from? And places where you know you need to just close the books for because you're wasting your time there.

Never take your failure as a failure. I think I've learned the most from not getting stuff. Say, for example, we were at the Entrepreneurship World Cup, which is a big stage. We were in Saudi [Arabia], and we were in the top 10 out of 2,500 organizations that were pitching. It almost felt like we were there, and then we didn't get the money. It was terrible. I don't even remember the rest of Riyadh because all that I was focused on was how could we lose.

I went and sought feedback, and everyone was just like, it was too confusing. We just needed to see the one thing that you were excelling in, and that's it.  Because we loved your mission, we loved what you were doing. That was a very significant feedback for me where we went back to a pitch and we just focused on the best thing that's generating revenue for us as the organization or the best thing that's suited for the audience in the room. 

Vijay Sai Pratap

I think it's about being open to that self-feedback when you're speaking and when you're talking to people. Again, people will give you feedback. Many of these conversations may not work out. Many of these don't convert. Most of them don't convert. But I think it's about learning from each of those conversations, saying, that what's clicked, [that's] what's not. I think then taking those points back and trying to see how you can incorporate it into your standard pitches. That's how we've learned, and we continue to do it almost every day.

Key takeaways 

• View rejection as valuable feedback to refine and enhance your pitch

• Adapt your approach iteratively, keeping an open mind to new insights and suggestions

• Walk away from dead-ends and invest additional effort into higher potential opportunities